


Then, Again

by JessaLRynn



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Love, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Ten!Too is Gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 05:49:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7832758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While working for Torchwood Cardiff, Rose Tyler follows an alien signal to a cafe. There, over a magazine spread, she makes a new old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Ficathon over on Then There's Us, this piece features a take on Ten!Too that I once toyed with - say he's at least as Donna as Doctor.
> 
> This piece was utterly excruciating to write, which was a shock, because I thought it would be so hilarious. On the other hand, it was so worth it. I hope you think so, too.

"That'll never last: he's gay and she's an alien."   
  
Rose Tyler froze when she heard that familiar voice, when those words that sounded like something she ought to know reached her ears. Only years of experience kept her from bolting for the door, only ages of familiarity with the bizarre kept her from flinging herself at the nearest mental health professional and gibbering.  
  
So she looked round instead, afraid to hope and more afraid to look too fast for fear of scaring herself sane again. As soon as she saw him, though, there was no mistaking it. That dark leather coat like a mourner's shroud, his armor against the memory of his people and the unburiable dead, that hair shorn so close it could never be mistaken for a vanity, she knew this at once, and a hundred hundred other things about him. They all fell into place with the speed and precision of a properly programmed nanogene. This was the Doctor, her Doctor, all blue-eyed and dark, and he was sitting here in a cafe in Cardiff, and Rose knew him as wholly as she knew herself.  
  
What she didn't know, what she couldn't even begin to imagine, was how he could be here, now, in a world with Zepplins and Pete Tyler, in a world that now boasted a Rose Tyler of its very own, a lost or stolen Rose, complete with her own baggage and her own Doctor. She couldn't see how, if any Doctor after him found this impossible, he could be sitting here sipping Vitex and reading a magazine.  
  
Nonetheless, he was here, and Rose now knew what had alerted Torchwood's sensors, what had put her here in this cafe. They couldn't interfere, though. She had no idea when the Doctor was, and she didn't dare get anyone else involved when it was entirely possible she was too early to be involved herself. She resolved herself to going at this gently, approaching the situation as only she could.  
  
Thus, Rose Tyler found herself kneeling, backward on a bench in a cafe booth, leaning over the black clad shoulder of her future former best friend forever. He was skimming through a popular magazine, ads and cliches standing out in between a tabloid-style photo spread that seemed to have captured his attention. Rose nearly gasped as she realized what she was looking at.  
  
"You sure?" she said. "He don't usually tell people he's gay, you know."  
  
"Dead cert," the Doctor assured her without looking up. "Besides, he might as well be holding a sign saying 'poofter' as wear that tie in public."  
  
Rose considered the pictured pink swirly tie. "Good point," she allowed. She frowned at the photo again. "Besides, he's the alien, too."  
  
"Doubt it," the Doctor replied with that cheerful flippancy that got Rose grinning almost in spite of herself. She'd missed this, missed him, and oh how it hurt now to know it was just no use.  
  
"That all you can say?" she asked. "Just 'doubt it'? No long-winded, clever argument about her nose or some such?"  
  
The Doctor snorted. "Look, lady, I dunno who you think..." He turned his head as he took as deep breath to start a good argument. "Oh, it's you," he added, deflating completely.  
  
Rose didn't know whether to be crushed or just completely depressed. "Oh, what's me?" she asked, and hoped she didn't sound as morose as she felt.  
  
"The girl in the photo," the Doctor pointed out accurately, then narrowed his vivid blue eyes, considering her further. "What planet are you from, anyways?"  
  
"Earth," Rose insisted, indignantly, letting off the fact that this was an Earth two years and at least two people completely different from the Earth she'd been born on. "Why, what planet are you from?" She knew, of course, but just wanted to see what he'd do.  
  
What he did was something Rose had never imagined, never suspected the Doctor was even remotely capable of doing. He grinned, all boyish charm and big ears (well, that part was normal), and shrugged.  
  
Rose, nearly flattened with confusion, could only blink for a moment. "Something you need?" the Doctor asked.  
  
"Possibly?" she asked, and because she didn't know what else to do, took a seat next to him.  
  
He frowned but, unlike the Doctor she had known like this, didn't try to get rid of her. "Won't your pretty boy be expecting you?" he asked.  
  
She sighed, and looked at the vibrant little quotes drawn into art, quotes the mag had taken from interviewing the charismatic, photogenic genius who was always her escort to public events. " _The whole universe interests me_ ," he'd said. "George Brecht, by the way, said that first..." and then he'd gone into a very long ramble about who George Brecht was, and how he liked his tea, and why he was completely wrong about the Void Stones, which contained absolutely no Void at all, and they'd lost him about there. Rose had followed avidly, of course, but then she understood him.  
  
"He's at work," she allowed. "Besides, he's not really my pretty boy. Well, I mean he is, if you consider someone gave him me once, but I sorta gave him back, at least I gave him back to him and... oh, hell, I sound just like him." She dropped her face into her hands.  
  
The Doctor chuckled and she remembered the first time she'd made him laugh, and how she'd learned only later that he'd never expected to laugh again. "I think you're a bit mad," the Doctor decided while Rose tried not to wish for impossible things. "But what's wrong with that?"  
  
"Usually, I sound just like..." She stopped herself just before she gave herself away, before she admitted that she usually sounded like him. She shook her head. "Like an old friend."  
  
The Doctor nodded. "Done that maself sometimes," he said, and the far away look in his eyes was so completely familiar that Rose's breath caught.  
  
They sat in surprisingly companionable silence for a long moment, and then the server with the perky buttons on her uniform top came up to them and asked if they wanted anything, and Rose sighed. "I want chips," she decided, for old times' sake. She was amazed the woman didn't recognize her and drop things and act ridiculous, but apparently there were some people left in the world who let celebrities be.  
  
"Woulda thought you'd get the four star treatment," the Doctor said, gesturing at his magazine again.  
  
" _The greatest gift I was ever given was a second chance..._ " was drawn out in the middle of the cheerful morass of the Tyler Christmas party. Rose almost smiled, but she felt bad for who wasn't in the pictures.  
  
"Still creeps me out," she admitted, gesturing at a picture of herself surrounded by a crowd of admirers.  
  
The look the Doctor gave her was a familiar glimpse of intense interest. "Really," he said, and he sounded for a moment like the one from the magazine himself. He settled back in his seat and looked her over with casual consideration. "Do tell."  
  
She did.  
  


*?*

After the two hour mark had been and gone, Rose decided she might ought to call in, just to let them know she'd not run off with any time traveling alien who might or might not be sitting next to her complaining about the economic recession in the local group and the price of a good Earl Grey on Shan Shen. However, under the circumstances, she decided to just use her phone.

"Hey, s'me," she said when the phone picked up.

"Rose!" he exclaimed, and he sounded relieved enough that Rose was instantly on alert. "Where are you?"

She looked at her table companion. She had done it again, gone from strangers to blind trust in the briefest of moments, and now she knew things about this man that she didn't think the one on the phone would have been willing to let on. He was smiling a dreamy smile, licking cream off her spoon. It was probably illegal, and if it wasn't, the ideas he was giving Rose definitely were. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she assured him, and leaned over to steal a quick swipe off a new spoonful.

The blazing look in those blue eyes was old and familiar, and something she'd not seen in so long, it was painful. Everything inside Rose clenched, her heart in pain and joy, her sex with a sharp tug of arousal that she had almost forgotten she could feel.

"Are you all right?" the man on the mobile demanded.

"Fine," Rose promised, then cleared her throat to stop squeaking at him. He'd know what that was, she was almost sure of it. It was imperative that she change the subject. "What's got you spooked?"

"Some sort of energy signal trace, converging on your location if I'm not mistaken." She could hear rapid-fire tapping at keys - one hundred words per minute - then he was back on the line. "It's familiar, but I can't place it off the top of my head."

"Patch me a copy," Rose suggested. "I'll get on it just soon's I get the chance."

There was a definite teasing grin to his voice when he asked, "Who're you doing?"

Rose watched the Doctor's eyebrows, and he'd obviously heard that one. "No one, yet," she replied, watching the blue eyes dance. "Why, d'you think I should?"

The Doctor in the booth with her looked comically alarmed, and somehow charmed at once. The one on the mobile gave a bright burst of joyous laughter. "I'll want blow by blow, love," he insisted.

Rose chuckled. In the long line of ghosts in her head, Captain Jack Harkness made a sudden bid for the forefront. "Somehow, I am having the strangest flash of _deja vu_."

A new server came up next to them and Rose ignored him, not because she normally ignored people, but because he had something that looked like a photo in hand, so she knew her cover had been blown and she'd have to sign something. "Call me soon's you figure it out, and I'll call you soon's I know something, yeah?"

"All right, honey," the Doctor at Torchwood agreed. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Rose grinned and watched the blue-eyed Doctor watching her, his fascinating face somehow amused and pleading at once. "I... honestly have no idea, just this once." Very deliberately selecting her words, she added, "I'll ring you in a few, Doctor."

The man in the booth with her didn't flinch, but Rose wasn't entirely certain he didn't react at all. He'd surely had years to practice not being the only doctor in a given situation. Then, his eyes shot up to the server, and Rose's followed automatically, and she wasn't joking about the deja vu anymore at all.

"Auton?" she asked, because she knew for sure it was an alien, and it definitely looked plastic.

"Looks like," agreed the Doctor with her. "This happen to you a lot?"

"Second time, actually," she said cheerfully, and pulled out her psychic paper.

The Auton didn't give her time to identify herself. "We've been looking for you," it said, possibly to the Doctor.

"I can't take you anywhere," Rose said playfully.

"Story of my life," the Doctor answered, and then the Auton attacked.

Rose popped out of the booth and over the table, shouting for everyone to get out. She delivered a roundhouse kick to the back of the Auton, dumping it squarely into the Doctor's lap. He had it in a headlock before Rose even regained her balance, grinning at her over the fumbling plastic body. Rose slammed her hand down on the fire alarm and jumped into the fray, keeping the creature's morphing arms away from the Doctor's unprotected body.

"Never understood why these things find you so fascinating," Rose mentioned.

The Doctor laughed and the head of the Auton popped off in his hands. "That's not going to stop me!" the creature exclaimed.

"Heard that one before." Rose and the Doctor grinned at each other over their accidental unison. They pushed the headless mannequin toward the loos and away from the scrum toward the cafe doors as everyone tried to get out.

"Door?" Rose suggested, gesturing across the cafe, while the Doctor wrapped the head up in his leather jacket.

"Too long," the Doctor answered. Behind them, the Auton was shooting plastic bullets at the furniture.

She nodded, grabbed a chair, and flung it through the window. She had to admire that this Doctor didn't seem to have a problem with taking his coat off - or at least he felt comfortable enough in front of her to do it. She looked back at their table, and couldn't help the thrill of frightened exhilaration that tumbled through her when she realized that the very end of the magazine spread had another of the Doctor's quotes made into art: " _I've never been afraid of the Big Bad Wolf..._ "

"Nice one," the Doctor decided, and Rose felt as admired as she was admiring, as intriguing as she was intrigued. Her new friend, however, apparently realized that their companionable talk had taken place without any kind of introduction. "I'm the Doctor, by the way."

The familiarity was so lovely it almost hurt. "Rose Tyler," she said this time, because she wasn't confused and frightened and amazed all at once, just amazed.

"Nice to meet you Rose," he said, and the Auton finally got to it's feet. "Run for your life!"

Rose grabbed his hand and, laughing and cheering, they proceeded to do just that.


	2. Chapter 2

"I'm gonna need access to a laboratory," the Doctor explained. "Don't s'pose your rich dad can arrange that?"  
  
They were hiding in a dark alley while he ran the sonic screwdriver over the Auton head, trying to track the signal back to the Nestene controlling the mannequin. Rose supposed the TARDIS was somewhere else, but she didn't want to ask about it. There was a part of her, really, that just wanted to huddle in a corner in a very small ball and pretend like none of this had ever happened. That part didn't want to take this road again, the road to knowing him slow and loving him fast, the path to being the Doctor's Rose and wishing with all her might that he wanted to be Rose's Doctor.  
  
The truth was, though, that she'd resigned her option to be that little huddled girl years ago, when she'd told the first Doctor she ever had that she would stay with him forever. Third time's the charm? she wondered flippantly.  
  
"Rose?"  
  
"Sorry, lab, right?" she said, coming abruptly back to the here and now and away from her least favorite beach in any universe.  
  
"Yeah, even if I can get a track on this thing, I'm still gonna need something to stop it with."  
  
"Anti-plastic, of course," Rose realized. "My dad can't arrange it, but I have some friends who can." She pulled out her mobile (no type of ear device was permitted in this version of Earth, not since the whole Cyber debacle, but she often used a small pad when it wasn't this important) and rang Torchwood Cardiff.  
  
The local Doctor was on the line almost before she'd even hit the speed dial properly. "Where are you, Rose? What the hell is happening out there? I've got signals coming up all over the grid, and you will never ever believe what appears to be sitting on our roof."  
  
"Never say never ever," Rose murmured.  
  
The Doctor's voice caught. "Oh, Rose," he said, so apologetic that she felt terrible for even drawing his attention to it. "Oh, I'm so..."  
  
"No, never mind, that was me. But I can believe. Wouldn't happen to be blue, would it? Maybe shaped like..."  
  
"It's a time machine," he interrupted frantically. "I'm absolutely sure of it."  
  
The Doctor with her said, "Who the hell are you people?"  
  
"Torchwood," Rose said softly, almost sure he would bolt.  
  
He didn't even blink, just grinned. "I've heard of you lot," he said. "We'll do great things together, in a couple hundred..."  
  
"Rose, am I hearing what I think I'm hearing?" demanded the Doctor on the mobile.  
  
The Doctor with her gestured her to take her call, checking his screwdriver for readings. Rose smiled. "Quite possibly," she allowed, "unless we both woke up mad this morning..."  
  
"You woke up in your office this morning, and I woke up... never mind." His voice was apologetic again, and Rose wondered how long they were going to keep doing this. Then, he cleared his throat and cheerfully admitted, "So a bit mad, yeah."  
  
Rose laughed. "Just bring the van instead of the SUV this time," she requested.  
  
"All right."  
  
"And Ianto," she added, with a bit of a tease in her tone.  
  
She could have sworn she heard him blushing.  
  


*?*

"If I could figure out a way to the other universe, I'd use it just to kill Jack," the part-human Doctor confided to Rose as he watched the Doctor in the leather jacket familiarizing himself with their mobile laboratory.

Rose was startled into laughter. "Why Jack?" she demanded, though she wondered how he thought he'd get the Captain to stay dead.

"I've got this overwhelming urge to walk up to himself over there and say 'hi sailor, new in town?'. I blame Harkness."

"Me, too," Rose agreed. She studied her partner to get a good look at his reaction to all this and shook her head in delighted amusement. "Whatever you're thinking, it's either absolutely meta or the weirdest piece of narcissism ever."

"I know," the Doctor agreed. "All the same, why the hell didn't you tell me my arse was that fantastic?"

"A girl's gotta keep some secrets," she said playfully.

"I really, really love you," the Doctor said softly. "Go on, give him a hand."

"This isn't bothering you?" Rose wondered, putting up a gentle hand to touch his face, almost reassuring herself of his presence.

"I'll probably do my nut any minute," the Doctor admitted. "What about you?"

Rose considered that she had every chance of falling for yet another man she absolutely could not have, and sighed. "I think I may be very, very stupid."

The Doctor considered his fellow Doctor, watching the quiet indulgence with which the man considered the pair of them before turning back to his work. "There's something off about him."

"He's fine," Rose found herself defending with a quiet snap, and then she dropped her head against the local Doctor's chest, almost wishing she'd never heard of Hendrick's in the first place.

"Go help him," the Doctor nudged again. "Go on."

Rose nodded and reached for a pair of gloves. She watched the dark Doctor as she got geared up, how even focused entirely on his chemistry project, he still looked up and smiled at her, his eyes inviting her to join him. He was different from her original Doctor, was an alternate Doctor, not an early Doctor - she didn't need the sorta-brown Doctor to tell her that, not really. He smiled easier, he was more open. Something was different, and considering that the first Doctor she had known had sworn he was impossible, she supposed she should have expected that.

"He seems a bit protective," the leather-clad Doctor commented, eying the part-human Doctor over a graduated cylinder.

Rose shrugged. "What can I help with?" she asked.

"Hold this," the Doctor ordered.

They worked in rather companionable silence for long moments, passing each other things, obeying a silent language like cogs in a clock, their movements meshing like they had always worked together and always would. Rose wouldn't have even noticed it, except that the part human Doctor was watching them with itchy fingered fascination, twitching like he was just dying to sonic the lot of them.

"What're you a doctor of?" the blue-eyed Doctor asked.

The other Doctor flinched. His usual answer wasn't going to work here, Rose supposed, but then he narrowed his eyes and said it anyway. "Bit of everything, really. You?"

Their eyes met and Rose expected something to explode for a minute. Then, the blue-eyed Doctor grinned and Rose thought he might actually like the other one. "Haven't met much of anything I don't know, yet. Where'd you take your degree?"

For every ounce of comfort the blue-eyed Doctor seemed to take from the conversation, the brown-eyed Doctor seemed to grow more agitated. Rose frowned, wondering if she should get between them, and if she did, whose side she should come down on.

"Prydon Academy," said the part-human Doctor, and Rose flinched. The leather clad Doctor, however, didn't, and Rose knew right then exactly what was different about him.

"Huh. Never heard of that; where is it?"

"Never..." the brown-eyed Doctor spluttered. "I need some air."

He left the van and for the first time since their second trip to Bad Wolf Bay, Rose had no idea how to help him, or if she even should. "Is he okay?" the Doctor asked, and Rose saw that compassionate concern that this Doctor usually hid, the soul-deep sorrow that sometimes glowed in the human Doctor's eyes as he looked at her.

"I don't know," Rose admitted. "Why?"

The Doctor considered for a long moment, then said, "Have you ever met someone and almost immediately knew... I dunno, just knew him?"

It hurt, oh gods it hurt. "Coupla times," she whispered, not daring to look at him.

"You caught me that way earlier," the Doctor said. "Well, not the same, not like I knew you. More like I should know you, Rose Tyler, like I will. Him, though... him I know."

Rose nodded sadly, not sure what else to do. If anyone would know each other, it would be these two parallel Doctors, flipped coins in the gambles of fate.

"He loves you completely," the Doctor added.

"I know."

"And you love him."

"So much," she admitted. So much it still hurt some times, so much it ached like a lost limb, so much she'd cried herself to sleep for months, so much she'd tried to change into who he needed. But they were beyond that now, five years beyond the point where they still hurt each other just to look at each other, five years past where they'd both accepted that they loved each other more than anyone, and would never be in love again.

"Then why don't I feel like I'm getting in the middle of something?" he asked.

"Because you're not," Rose admitted. "Because you... because I..."

"I'm attracted to you," the Doctor said. "It's almost frightening, how attractive you are."

She didn't know what to say, just looked up and met his blue eyes and tried to ignore the tears running down her cheeks.

"Who are you, Rose Tyler, and why do I feel like stars ought to orbit you?"

She couldn't even shrug, and she couldn't figure out how he had gotten so close either. She was sure she hadn't moved, and equally sure he hadn't. All the same, her lips started tingling, the sense memory of a Time Lord's cool kiss making her whole body quake with impossible anticipation.

"I don't even know where you came from." He sighed, and rested his head against her forehead instead, and Rose found herself as relieved as she was depressed. "I don't even know where I came from," the Doctor admitted bitterly. "So why exactly do I get the impression that your friend does?"

Rose wanted him to know. She also wanted him to never ever know, as happy as he was, that there was ever a universe where his responsibilities weighed any more than they already must. She wanted to tell him, to sit him down and explain to him about the Shining World in the Constellation of Kasterborous the Time Keeper, the amber world of red grass and silver trees, of golden domes and mountains older than most stars. Yet the light in his eyes would grow dim, and damp, and she didn't know if she could endure it again, when he already meant too much to her.

Everything that could possibly happen from this was raging and fluttering inside her, so Rose did what they had always done, so naturally and easily it felt completely right. "Autons?" she mentioned. "Saving the world?"

The Doctor gaped at her incredulously for a moment, like he couldn't believe any universe had ever summoned up something like her, and then he threw his head back and laughed.

*?*

Rose introduced the Doctor to her hand-picked team, and they razzed the Doctor they knew, and gawked at the Doctor they didn't. While she set them to work getting people out of harm's way (dealing with the inevitable), she kept the visiting Doctor with her without even thinking about it.

They were alone together again before she even realized what she'd done, and she tried to pretend like it didn't mean anything. She didn't know why, really, just that she had to do it that way if she wanted to make it through this one. "How close were the coordinates before the head melted?" she wondered.

"Narrowed it down to the Plaza and the area around the old water front. Think that might be where the thing came through, actually. Since that Rift's gotta be the reason you lot have a base here, I'm guessing you know the sort of flotsam and jetsam that falls through."

Rose nodded, wondering what he'd think if he knew that she was really just a bit of space debris, a sort of trans-universal driftwood, herself. "Well, the last time I met one, it was using the London Eye for a transmitter, but this one seems to be doing something different."

"There's the Water Tower there?"

She grinned and stage-whispered, "Actually, that's where I keep my super-secret alien-chasing base."

"Oh, well, was worth the thought." He smirked. "Although, I dunno. You seem to have a funny definition of 'alien', Rose. You sure you'd notice a Nestene? Not had any trouble with the plumbing lately?"

"Don't think I've had any vats of superheated smart plastic appear anywhere. That would've come up at a meeting or something, don't you think?"

They were laughing and walking toward the city center as they talked, but she couldn't help being delighted that the Doctor was playing with her so easily. "Maybe they were keeping it as a surprise," he suggested gleefully.

"Ianto'd say something, I know he would." She mocked his dignified Welsh accent with some difficulty, but she couldn't help trying anyway. "'I think you should know that the toilets have taken to arguing back...'"

"Oh, don't do that," he said, though he was laughing.

Rose, because there were places she didn't want to go with him, not yet and maybe not ever, and weeping over the Doctor she'd lost was one of those places, didn't take that line to its logical conclusion. Suffice it to say any Doctor thought she was terrible at voices and leave it at that.

However, this Doctor was more willing than the others to tackle her emotions. "Where'd you go?" he asked, and Rose could tell he meant in her memories.

"It's a long story," she said. "And one that we don't have time for while there are invading aliens on the loose." Determined, she shook her head and changed the subject. "What do you know about Cardiff?"

The Doctor looked as if he was very much considering reading her mind - and wouldn't he just get one helluva a shock if he tried? - but accepted her distraction with clear frustration. "Never been to this planet, so I couldn't tell you. I came here now because I was in the vicinity and my ship needed refueling."

"At the Rift," Rose realized, trying not to gleefully exclaim something about time and space. She couldn't even imagine a Doctor who hadn't been to Earth before, when her Doctor used to try to avoid the planet, he hit it so often. Still, she'd decided to change the subject away from her, and it was hardly fair to turn it back onto him. "That thing's a magnet, honestly. If I were a metric ton of animated plastic, where would I hide?"

"Disney World," the Doctor replied immediately.

"Apart from there," Rose agreed. So he'd been to human places, (like the literal Disney World she'd visited once) just not to Earth. And this Earth was so different to the one she'd grown up on, anyway; Disney had theme parks in most major cities. In fact they'd wanted to put one in Wales...

"At the Castle," Rose realized. It wasn't a tourist trap here, just a derelict of a thoroughly by-gone era which no one was particularly wistful for, given the mess that followed the fall of the monarchy here.

A text appeared from the other Doctor almost as soon as she'd realized. Rose laughed, as she read out, "Have you considered the Castle?"

She flipped open her mobile long enough to ring him and tell him, "You read my mind!"

*?*

After that, it was almost too easy. They ran hand-in-hand to the Castle, trouble and more trouble brewing as they went. Last time, the TARDIS had set it off; this time, the Doctor's mere presence - or Rose's, he didn't make that bit clear in his translation - started the flailing soup of a creature into panic mode.

Rose ended up having to modify an atomizer from her kit into an anti-plastic sprayer, which the Doctor found fascinating. Between them, they cornered the alien, trying everything to persuade it to surrender and go home.

It was then that she got the call that the signal had been boosted over the Rift and was already effecting the whole side of the planet. Not only was Cardiff in danger, but every where the sun was shining was seeing the plastic come to life.

They had to kill it after that. It wouldn't listen, and it was killing people. Rose, who didn't even think about it the first time around, was horrified this time. She thought it was because she'd seen too much death since then, because she'd learned all too well that people didn't always look like people, because it had been too long since she'd had no choice but to kill someone. Maybe it was because the Doctor was with her and safe and she could feel two hearts thundering against her empty chest when they held each other while the Castle collapsed around them. She wasn't sure.

All Rose Tyler knew was that it seemed too much all of the sudden, and she was crying.


	3. Part 3

"You're going with him," the Doctor said. It wasn't a question, but he managed to not make it an accusation or a complaint either, and Rose was suitably impressed, especially since she was standing beside his bed in the Torchwood Infirmary to have this conversation. He'd been shot in the leg, which scared Rose, but to hear this Doctor tell it, the most absolutely unthinkable part had been the singeing of his hair.  
  
He was completely absurd, sometimes. It was one of the things she loved about him uniquely, her not-quite hers, not-quite earthly Doctor.  
  
"He still thinks I'm an alien," Rose replied. "Not half-human, not even remotely human, and all I can think is Mum, all those years ago, telling me that I'd just be this strange woman in some alien city in the distant future. She was so mad at me - at us - then. What'll she say to me if I do this _again_?"  
  
"What would she say if you didn't, Rose?" he demanded indignantly. "It's Jackie. She's gotta complain about something or she explodes."  
  
"Doctor," Rose chided.  
  
The Doctor was part of her family, but he and Jackie insisted on maintaining their bickering and routinely insulting one another. Rose would usually let him keep going, but she couldn't this time, because she had to know what he really thought. The Doctor sighed and pressed his head back into his pillows, looking at her as if she was more stressful than a flock of Daleks. (Flock? Pile? Murder? Whatever the collective noun was, it probably wasn't an exaltation. She forced herself to drop the irrelevant topic and wondered why her mind had to think like a Doctor so often.) The point was, he had no right to think she was difficult, and she glowered at him.  
  
He patted the bed next to him and looked so bunny-eyed and pleading at her that Rose couldn't help climbing up there. It took her some time to settle in next to him, careful of his injuries but not so careful as to avoid touching him when he needed the contact. She used to wonder if his lover resented this thing they had between them. She also used to wonder if she should resent it. Like so many things, it had passed.  
  
He was looking at her as if it hadn't passed, actually. "I've always been so terribly selfish about you, Rose," he confessed quietly. "I've loved you since I met you, wanted you right up 'til I couldn't. Needed you always, and that's just the thing. Jackie's got Tony, and Pete, and Alexandra, and she doesn't need you so much any more. I've got my head screwed on the right way round, and I've got... well, I've got what I've got, and I don't suppose I really need you so much either."  
  
"What if I need you?" Rose whispered, tears choking her, fear deafening her. "What if I want to just stay with you like this forever?"  
  
The Doctor reached over and took her hand, met her stinging eyes and looked deep into them. He let the fire show, the hinted echo of what he'd once been, what he honestly didn't want to be anymore, what that blue-eyed, unknowing Doctor still was. "You can't though, Rose. I can spend the rest of my life with you, but you can't spend the rest of your life with me. That's the secret you've been trying not to tell for so long it's become who you are, just like hiding my name was me."  
  
"Was you," she realized. Rose blinked, swiping at her face and putting the tears aside. "So... you've chosen a name then?"  
  
"I have," he said softly.  
  
"Do I get to know it?"  
  
"'Course you do," he said, and he sounded almost as choked up as she was. "Who else would I tell it to, eh?" He took a deep breath. "But Rose, that's not the most important thing I said there, now is it?"  
  
"It is," she argued - or tried. Her usual banter fell flat and short, but she stubbornly tried it anyway. "I mean, man with no name picks one..."  
  
"Rose." He stilled her as the blue-eyed Doctor would still her - not the one waiting to see what she was up to here, but the one who'd taken her hand in a department store and changed her entire universe - with a single, stern word.  
  
She looked at him as she'd looked at that Doctor - part awe-struck little girl and part fascinated woman - and he smiled at her, himself again, and it was all so disorienting for a moment, that she just blurted out, "I thought it would stop."  
  
His information was thorough, because she rarely kept things from him. It still took him a few minutes to connect all the dots he knew and all the dots he was just now seeing. "You thought... the Cannon?"  
  
"It was giving off the most peculiar radiation when they found it," Rose pointed out logically. "And no one saw that whole thing coming."  
  
The memory rushed over her, finding out Torchwood had the Cannon, trying to stop them using it, arguments and chaos and threats, and then bursting through the door, no thought further than saving the Universe from stupidity. She remembered so little after that the first time, just the smell of the room, and the look of bewildered terror on the engineer's face, then the cold, sharp burn of the TARDIS key against her chest, and then there was swirling, layering, page flipping, falling, crashing into reality upon reality upon the dirty floor of the Torchwood Tower.  
  
The Doctor couldn't reason out her logic, which surprised Rose a lot, because if there was anyone any Doctor was better at lying to than himself, she couldn't even imagine that person. He should know why Rose telling herself that kind of fiction had seemed... better. "Why?"  
  
"It was completely unknown tech," she reminded him. "Made no sense like that, anyway, me just sort of falling into it. I thought I'd caught whatever kept it in one piece."  
  
"Makes sense," he said with a smile. "Well done."  
  
Rose chuckled. "See, everything we do, and I still come right back to where I started - silly ape with a bit of logic."  
  
He smiled so gently it warmed her through, like brandy on a cold night. They had learned so many strange and unusual meanings of the word love together, the two of them. Rose smiled and watched him drift between sleepiness and waking, content just to be with him, to know he was safe.  
  
She could do that now, maybe, if the newer Doctor really had a time machine, leave him safe and come back between ages and ages, with only days passing since last she saw him. She thought she understood now why the Doctor she could only think of as "the original" had needed to leave everyone, even her.  
  
She wondered if the amnesiac Doctor, the one time had plunked so neatly onto her doorstep had any idea what awaited him in the universe. Could he possibly have more than the inkling clue she'd seen in his trace sadness exactly how long he had compared to everything else?  
  
It hit her then, like a bus between the eyes, and she startled fully alert. "Where'd he come from?" she demanded of the part-human Doctor. It seemed impossible, and that made everything possible.  
  
"What?" the Doctor asked, surprised enough that he snorted off a little snore, looking around in confusion as if to try to find who'd made the noise.  
  
Rose thought he was adorable, all drowsy and alarmed, but she didn't have time all the same. "Where did he come from? The blue-eyed Doctor, he had to come from somewhere, and if..." She cut herself off, not daring to say what she was thinking for fear of hurting him terribly, but the newer Doctor had to have come from somewhere and _if they came from the same place, then maybe that world..._ "Maybe it's still here," she breathed, in spite of herself. _And maybe they can..._ did she even dare think it? But he'd told her a story about being fully human once, made human by technology. If his people had that tech, then they could turn a part Time Lord all the way Time Lord.  
  
Rose didn't care, really, if he became Queen of the Time Lords (in any sense of those words) as long as he was allowed to make his own choices. She almost bounced with the possibility. She wouldn't ask anything of him, she couldn't even want to change him anymore, but if he only got to decide, that would be worth it, just to see him shine, himself again, fully, the universe at his fingertips. He would be free.  
  
She wanted to see him run again, even if he wasn't running away with her.  
  
"Oh Rose," he said, softly, looking somehow sorry _for her_ as he shook his head. "Gallifrey's not like that."  
  
It wasn't his old pity at her ignorance, she realized, as her hope plummeted, grief growing new and raw in its place. She wasn't sure what it was, but it looked a lot like his "I'm so sorry" face. "What?" she whispered, unable to do anything else.  
  
"It's... hard to explain, Gallifrey." He thought for a long moment, then smiled a lop-sided smile and nodded. "It's like those school art galleries Pete keeps funding. Where he orders all those prints of great works for the kids to see proper art?"  
  
Rose gave a small, fond smile. "He does it for me," she said softly, because he did. They'd both grown up without it, her and Pete, and they both loved it, so this was an almost-father-sorta-daughter thing they did together.  
  
"Well, lets say that every one of Pete's little galleries is a universe."  
  
Rose chuckled. "Does that make Pete a god, then, because I think only Alexandra would believe you there?"  
  
The Doctor grinned. "Runs in the family, I guess," he said with a shrug, then darted on before he trod on fragile ground. "It's like all those galleries are the universes, and all the prints and casts and things are the planets inside those universes, right?"  
  
"With you so far," Rose agreed.  
  
"Well, what if one of them had copies of all the same pieces, as usual, but it also had one piece, one original sculpture by the mad genius who created it? That'd be Gallifrey."  
  
Rose nodded, not sure why he couldn't have just explained in physics. She had a doctorate of her own, now, two of them, in fact. However, all he had to do to answer that unspoken question was keep talking.  
  
"Imagine that no one - not the best artists or sculptors or even scientists to see this particular piece can ever, ever figure out how it was done. They come and stare at it and they poke and prod at it, and all sorts, but no one can ever explain it, not even people who study under the artist-inventor, in schools he created, not even his best students. It can't be duplicated for any other gallery. It can't even be modeled. It is, because it was made by some impossible method by a brilliant lunatic, forever unique."  
  
"I never knew," Rose mused thoughtfully. "I mean, you said it was special, but I thought you meant like Earth is special to me, 'cuz I'm from there."  
  
He smiled. "I know you did. At the time, I wouldn't have willingly told you that I didn't understand it, either." He grinned. "I always wanted to keep you impressed, remember, and it had never been harder in my lives." Rose grinned back, her amusement winning the moment.  
  
It wasn't long, though, before she was shaking her head, thinking. Her eyes misted over. "It still doesn't explain why he exists. If your world has to be unique, surely it can't..."  
  
"Back to the same analogy. There's one piece that flies off of the original, so it can be duplicated, by wild chance, by accident, by necessity..."  
  
"You're not a puzzle piece!" Rose exclaimed, indignant on his behalf.  
  
The Doctor chuckled. "All right," he allowed as Rose continued to glare at him. "But I'm hardly the first time I've been duplicated. We've discussed those others..."  
  
"Yes, but they were malicious," Rose reminded him. "You said, you know..."  
  
"The Time War may have splintered my timeline more thoroughly than I thought, Rose. He may be a product of a reality I don't remember. Or they may have summoned him up, on purpose or by accident. He may be older than that, a choice I don't remember making." The Doctor paused and gave her a weighty look, his dark eyes intent. "He may be yours."  
  
Something felt heavy inside her, a thick stew of pain and molten gold. She couldn't breathe further than to manage, barely, "I don't..."  
  
"You saw everything, Rose," the Doctor pointed out apologetically. "Maybe you wished for him..."  
  
"I wouldn't," Rose denied. She knew that, if she knew anything. "You said it once - a man is the sum of his memories. He's someone like the Doctor, but he's not the same man, not really. His memories are different. He's not you."  
  
The Doctor took her hand and stroked it comfortingly. "He needs you," he said, old words, invoking such pain and such hope at once. "That's very me."  
  
"Not fair," Rose grumbled, and her adrenaline surge was abruptly spent. She wanted to get mad, but there was nothing left inside her. The length of her day settled in hard.  
  
"Close your eyes," he said soothingly. "I'll still be here when you wake."  
  
"Damn right you will," Rose said as fiercely as she could muster through her exhaustion. "If you even think about getting out of this bed before they clear you, I'll break your other leg."  
  
"Oh, thank you," said the Doctor dryly, and nothing else for awhile.  
  
Rose lay her head against the mattress, wondering how much longer it would be before she didn't sleep any more. She thought she could reasonably look forward to that possibility for whatever she was changing into. "I just wonder if that's all I'm for," she mused, yawning hugely halfway through the sentence.  
  
"What's that?" the Doctor mumbled.  
  
"Bad Wolf Towing," she joked half-heartedly. "Broken Doctors, patched while you wait."  
  
He didn't say anything, his fingers gentle in her hair, his touch too cool for a human's, too warm for a Time Lord's, unique. She would know him anywhere, by touch, by sound, by smell, by senses she couldn't define. He was the Doctor, and she had felt that from the word 'go', just as she had known the brown-eyed Doctor was the same as her first blue-eyed Doctor (once she'd been able to even consider that).  
  
She'd met him since then, too, blond men and brunettes, small and tall, youthful and ancient, sweet and strange and strong, blue eyed and green, and she knew him every time. Even if she'd never understood how she knew it, it was a sense she somehow had, of a man wrapped in time and wonder, wreathed in danger and loss and the joy in existence that the universe could not survive without. Age changed him, space and time changed him, and yet there was something fundamental about him, the essential Doctor, and Rose Tyler seemed to know, always, who he really was.  
  
The newest man, despite all her protests, was the Doctor, too.  
  
She closed her eyes to dream it away, the hand of her dearest friend in hers. The journey she called her life was insane and terrible, painful and bittersweet. It was full of wild wonder and pitfalls and laughter. It was everything she'd never dared to dream of, and everything she always wished she could be, and despite the tears and thorns, she wouldn't trade it for anything.  
  
She may have said that last aloud, because she heard the Doctor murmur, in a surprisingly soft, even stranger than usual tone, "I wouldn't either. Precious girl."  
  
She was too far gone to remember that he never called her that anymore.  
  


*?*

Rose couldn't decide if she was awake, later, when she heard the Doctor murmur, "She's asleep. You can come in."

She really, really hoped Ianto wasn't about to evict her from this bed, because it was warm and cozy, and he wouldn't even use it, so what was the point. And if it was someone who worked here, some other doctor, they were completely out of luck, because there were only two people in this universe who could get her out of this bed.

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you."

It was another doctor, all right, the older Doctor with his Northern accent and his utter unfamiliarity with the world that gave it to him. Rose was almost sure she wasn't awake after all, because if she was, this wouldn't make any sense, the Doctor and the Doctor talking to himself. She drifted, blissfully ignorant.

"...don't think you understand," she realized the Doctor she was still touching was getting a little louder, so she tucked tighter into his side, and he seemed to take that as a hint to be quiet, because he dropped the volume. "You're not like them."

She was considering going away again, when she heard a grim chuff so familiar that it either hurt or made her grin, and she couldn't decide which. She put off the decisions altogether in favor of listening to him grumble. "Shoulda thought that was obvious." He sounded brighter immediately, more mercurial in his freedom from burdens than any Doctor she'd known. "Genius, me," he claimed cheerfully.

"Of course you are," said the Doctor on the bed, quite sarcastically. "What's six fifteens?"

"Ninety," the Northern voice answered, and Rose could picture his eyebrows in his hairline. "That all you got?"

"Double it."

"One eighty."

"Good. Can you multiply that times five and one twentieth?"

"You're serious?" the other Doctor asked incredulously. "It's 909. What're you playing at?"

"That's your age, Time Boy," the Doctor on the bed said. "Well, what you'll admit to, last I knew."

She could hear the astonishment in the unknowing Doctor's voice, as soon as he spoke. "I... didn't think. I've not..."

Rose drowsed, oblivious, until, "You don't remember being around her kind before?"

"No. You?" The blue-eyed Doctor sounded almost sheepish, then, and Rose really wanted to open her eyes. "That wasn't what I meant. She never said where she was from."

"Rose was born human," the brown-eyed Doctor replied. "That's why I sent for you."

She could just imagine the storm building in both their expressions, and Rose was almost sure this wasn't a safe place to be. All the same, there was no chance of her moving, not one, even if she could vanish without disturbing the conversation. She was never missing this.

"You never sent for me; I snuck in."

"You were let in." She could hear the Doctor grin when he added, "Trust me on this." If her eyes were open, she'd've rolled them.

"Why?" The other Doctor's question was wary and Rose knew he was already searching for exits. It made her sad to think, to realize really, that without even knowing himself, the Doctor still knew to trust least the people who knew him best.

"She's going with you, Rose. If there was ever a time when she could stay on the ground, it's passed. And you need to know something about her, something very, very important."

She was obviously still asleep, Rose decided. It was going to turn into a nightmare, the one she'd had all too often, where the Doctor went back in time and warned himself to avoid her. She'd just imagined he was some new Doctor - this was some wrinkle and...

"She's fantastic?" the blue-eyed Doctor suggested, with just that hint of wry humor that always made Rose smile.

"No... well, yeah, course she is, don't be stupid." The Doctor shook his head - she could tell that much - and rubbed her back soothingly as she sagged in relief. She decided she wasn't as interested in the conversation as she'd first thought and just let herself drift away. There was no need to listen after all, nothing to worry about even a little.

They mumbled back and forth for several long moments, long enough that Rose almost believed it was a dream again, almost. Then, the Doctor's voice, saying her name, dragged her back into the moment like a snap shot. "Rose is compassionate."

"I can tell," the other Doctor pointed out wryly. "Never knew anyone to cry over a Nestene. Even other Nestenes rarely notice..."

"She's more compassionate than that. It's not negotiable with her. As far as I know, the only thing she did not forgive truly for all its sins was the very devil, and I'm not sure she couldn't have managed it eventually."

Rose frowned. She'd never considered it, but then she'd hardly gotten to talk to the evil inside Toby, had she? She'd tried to save him, originally. Did the Doctor think less of her for that?

"In your line of work, it's something to keep in mind. I'd never try to stop you. I'd never try to stop her, either. Did that once... completely stupid, really. But she'll change you - for the better, forever. And for you, forever's not such an exaggeration."

"If she wants to come with me, I'm takin' her," the blue-eyed Doctor said firmly. "Changed my life, already, an' I just met her. And then there's you..."

"Never mind me." There was shuffling as the Doctor worked himself up onto his elbows, and then, for a long moment, it was like he was bracing himself for something. When he spoke, he was as stern as Rose had ever heard this him, as much the Oncoming Storm as any of the others had ever been. "How long are you gonna stay with her?"

There was the already familiar sound of the other Doctor's chuff of amusement, a sound Rose was unsure she could remember from the original when he had this body. "How long will she put up with me?" he answered cheerfully.

Rose relaxed completely. It was enough, more than enough. It was all the hope she needed.

"But..."

"No buts," the blue-eyed Doctor insisted. "Whatever happens, she's worth it. Rose is worth it."


	4. Epilogue

"That woman is your mother?" the Doctor demanded.  
  
Sheepish and still unable to wipe the grin from her face, Rose nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said, and then, trying to stop her laughter, she added, "sorry."  
  
The Doctor stared back to where he'd been pinched, yelled at, punched, and snogged (on the cheek, luckily for him), then looked down at Rose. "And to think I'd wondered," he said, blue eyes huge and vaguely terrified.  
  
Rose couldn't resist letting him see her grin, now, even though it was likely to make him petulant. "You wondered what?"  
  
"You're quite formidable, you know. Now I know why. You had to be, just to survive."  
  
"I'll tell her you said that," Rose threatened cheerfully. It seemed no matter what universe was involved, the Doctor was always going to be slightly terrorized by her mother.  
  
"Only if you ring her from Andromeda."  
  
The Doctor got snagged back into the gathered group. Rose smiled at them, at Tony who couldn't seem to stop staring at the Doctor, at Pete who had threatened him with mayhem if any harm came to Rose, at Jackie and all the madness that came part and parcel with her. There was quite a crowd beyond them, and Rose would swear the Doctor had had to promise every one of them she would be safe with him. He was currently playing twenty questions with Alexandra. There was one person, though, who was quite conspicuous in his absence.  
  
"Not letting her tag along as well, are you?"  
  
Rose grinned so brightly it nearly hurt, and turned to wrap her arms around the brown-eyed Doctor. He hugged back with all the enthusiasm he could manage, and then some, and Rose had to demand he put her down before he re-injured his leg.  
  
"What?" she mumbled at last, burying her face in the Doctor's skinny chest, missing him already.  
  
"I said, are you taking your cousin with you?"  
  
Rose shook her head, trying to imagine Alexandra's meticulous coif covered it exploded jagrafess. "Nah," she said, and the Doctor had said it at the same time, and they laughed together.  
  
The whole crowd was meandering toward the Plaza now, where the Doctor had parked his time machine, so that they could all be there to say goodbye to Rose. She felt a small pang as she watched the earth-bound Doctor's beautiful face twist in a completely recognizable painful anticipation. She knew the look, because she was sure a smaller version of it was on her own face.  
  
All at once, she made up her mind. She stopped him, let everyone else get well ahead of them. "Come with us," she said, quietly and urgently. For his peace of mind, she could do anything, even watch him whither, even see him die.  
  
"Rose..." He said it as if he was cautioning her, reminding her that it wasn't hers to offer.  
  
The hell with it. Once again, she had been asked to move into the TARDIS with the Doctor. She wasn't going to let it be anything less than her home, which she could therefore share as she pleased.  
  
"Seriously. Come with us. Bring... bring Ianto." She nodded with satisfaction, proud inside of who she had become, who they all had grown to be.  
  
"Rose, I..."  
  
"What?" she demanded, crossly.  
  
The Doctor sighed, and both his hands jerked through his hair, putting the un into unruly. "I want to," he assured her. "But I can't."  
  
"Why not?" she demanded. "It's the TARDIS, probably completely familiar..."  
  
He sighed and leaned back against a building, his head back as he considered the sky like he was looking at the sun from the bottom of a well. "That's why. It will be too familiar and not familiar enough, and I don't think I'm really ready to face all of that, yet."  
  
Rose considered him carefully, reading him as only she could do, about a half step back from outright telepathy. "All right," she decided at last. "This time. Next time, I'm not letting you off."  
  
"Fine, the very next time you run away with a crazy alien, I'm going with you," the Doctor agreed.  
  
They laughed together for a long moment, and then went to catch up with their party. It was only just before they reached the open area around the fountain that Rose remembered one more thing she had promised herself she would do. "I think you need to talk to Ianto," she said.  
  
The Doctor looked outright embarrassed at this point, and Rose was amused once again by his strange modesty. "Talking's not really... our thing."  
  
"You?" she demanded. "You don't talk to someone." Rose shook her head because she couldn't believe her ears, then made him stop walking to turn to look at her seriously. "I don't believe it."  
  
"I... well, not anything useful, I don't talk about that..."  
  
"I know you don't." She sighed in the face of his utter bafflement, then nodded and gathered herself. "You should though, Time Boy." His confusion got even deeper as she used the nickname he wasn't even aware he'd invented. (The "Donna-isms" as he called them, came out without his awareness, usually.) When he opened his mouth to ask the question, though, she stopped him, unwilling to let him off this hook, no matter how he squirmed. It was for him, this time. "Look, I know you both think you're just settling or something. I know that, because you both think you've lost your chance with the love of a lifetime, right?"  
  
The Doctor nodded, glumly and reluctantly, his eyes raking Ianto's dapper form with more sorrow and distress than anything one might expect with a lover. Rose knew him better than that, though, had watched him start to treat Ianto a little like he'd treated her when she was very young - with kid gloves and admiration, probably hoping to keep the emotion at bay. "He lost a lot, you know."  
  
"So did you. Everything, really."  
  
"That's hardly something to claim in common," the Doctor grumbled, looking anywhere but at her.  
  
"It is, though," Rose said. "Did you think I didn't know how you met him? He's the one who recorded my story."  
  
"I wanted... needed... Rose."  
  
She stopped him with a hand on his lips, tender as he seemed to quiver like a new caught bunny. "He's a lot like me, I think. Clever and pretty..."  
  
"Oi!" the Doctor protested, behind her touch. She wouldn't move her hand. "Well, isn't this wizard?" he grumbled and fell quiet at last.  
  
She dropped her hand, and let her old grin show, her best one. "He needs you, yeah?"  
  
The Doctor shook his head, and Rose glowered at him, until he nodded, a painful admission that, despite all they'd given to each other, seemed to have cost him. "You're right about that line," he decided.  
  
"But he does, right, because Ianto believes, deep down, that he's only good enough to play second string, and that's not fair, and he believes that he doesn't deserve to get too close, and..."  
  
The Doctor was looking heartbroken, so Rose stopped. She just stopped. It wasn't worth causing him all this pain, just to try to show him something he technically knew. Quieter, insistent, she switched to what she really needed him to hear. "All I'm saying is, you're still alive, the pair of you. And you and I know better than anyone that while there's still life, there's gotta be hope. You gotta give that one a chance, at least."  
  
The Doctor nodded again, more slowly this time, then suddenly grinned brightly, his beautiful face more beautiful in the very thought. "Hope's a good one," he said. "I quite like hope."  
  
Rose laughed and took his hand, then threaded them through the crowd, while no one protested, being fairly used to such behavior out of them. "Promise me," she insisted quietly. "Just one more thing, promise me this."  
  
"Promise you what?" he asked warily.  
  
"That I can dance at your wedding." The Doctor rolled his eyes, but Rose knew, too, that he was fighting off tears. She decided to lighten it up a little. "C'mon, you know he'd look great in a tux."  
  
"Fantastic," the Doctor agreed, and they giggled like girlfriends.  
  
"I love you," they both said, and then the world caught up to them.  
  
There, in the center of the Plaza, she stood, all tall and blue and boxy, and quietly swirling with the invisible light of impossible magic. Leaning up against her side, as someone just like him had done so long ago, was the Doctor, all leather and grinning, his blue eyes laughing, his hearts so light they held Rose up.  
  
"This is my ship," the Doctor said proudly, and Rose would've known that even if she'd looked like a cedar chest. She was singing, a bright new melody, and Rose could hear her. She looked up and realized that the earth-bound Doctor could hear it too, as well as the Doctor who stood, making eyes for only her. He was waiting.  
  
She was so familiar, a blue police box, assistance obtainable immediately. Rose couldn't resist, she couldn't. She broke into a run.  
  
"Wait!" Jackie was screeching behind her, and Rose just laughed, because this was always her life, forever, the TARDIS and the Doctor ahead of her, her family and her past...  
  
She stopped and she turned. "I'll always come back to you," she promised, the brown-eyed Doctor, as well as her mother and her brother. "You know that mum. Just ten..."  
  
"Oh, go on," Jackie grumbled. "Don't give me any more rubbish about ten seconds." She looked at the alarmed looking blue-eyed Doctor. "But if she's gone for a year this time, Mister, one of us is gonna be a lot sorrier than me about it."  
  
Rose started to correct her mother, heard the earth-bound Doctor do the same, stopped, and just looked at him. They both started laughing, helplessly.  
  
When the storm of humor had passed, Rose insisted, "Next time."  
  
"Next time," the Doctor agreed, and then he offered her his hand. Rose took it, one last time, because she knew someone else would fill her spot, very soon. She made sure of it, tugging a very nervous looking Ianto Jones close with only her free hand. "Look after him for me," she demanded, and then she put the Doctor's hand into the other man's, and it fit right.  
  
"Fantastic," pronounced the Doctor behind her.  
  
The Doctor in front of her blinked down at his lover's hand in his own as if he couldn't believe the way it fit. "Yeah," he said, "fantastic."  
  
"Goodbye, Rose," Ianto said, gravely as only he could manage. "I'll do my best."  
  
"That'll be just about right." On tiptoe, she kissed him, and his Doctor, and then she went round with hugs for her team and kisses for her family, and then, at last, she was ready.  
  
"Don't I get one, too?" the Doctor asked, pouting in that way that the original - the one Rose would never forget, but could finally, here and now, let go - would have denied to the death. It was silly and beautiful and Rose could never resist it.  
  
"Yeah, all right," she said, and before he could get away, she wrapped her arms around his neck and snogged him breathless.  
  


*?*

The Doctor still looked dazed while Rose walked around the console room, touching this and that, familiarizing herself with the unfamiliar contours and the strangely familiar presence. She finally took pity on him, setting her bag down behind the ubiquitous hat stand (she could only assume all TARDISes came with six or seven of them, minimum), and joining him next to the console.

"So," she said gleefully, "didn't you mention it also travels in time?"

The Doctor grinned and offered his hand, and Rose took it gladly, and they were off.


End file.
